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Re: Tektite / Impactite

Personally, I think much of the mainstream interpretation of tektites
ignores a huge, well reasoned body of evidence.  Tektites are so distinct
from "impactites" as to place them in a class by themselves.  

To understand the most important argument againts the terrestrial impact
origin of tektites it is necessary to know that the meaning of the word
"glass" used by geologists and glass makers.  To a geologist, glass is any
amorphous material, a silicate.  To a glass maker, glass is a substance free
of bubbles  Such a glass is a "good" glass (Type A glass)--just like
tektites.  "Junk" glass (Type B glass) is made by a meteorite impact--i.e.,
impactities.  Type A glass simply can't be made rapidly as you'd expect in
an impact.  It needs time--10 minutes or more--to form.  The bubbles
disappear in a process called "fining."  It is improbable that you can form
tektites without a period of prolonged heating (volcano is the perfect
suspect).  

This may sound arrogant, but the vast body of techinical literature since
the late 1980s cheerfully ignores the physics of glass formation--that's the
heart of the tektite debate as I see it and why some researchers simply
think linking tektites and impactites together is stupid.  They were not
formed by the same process.  Hence, tektites are most likely not impactites!
 Also, the volcanic structures observed in Muong Nong (layered) tektites by
Von Koenigswald, O'Keefe, Futrell, Lowman have yet to be explained by impact
processes.

I am hoarse from debating this point, but it will take a long time before
scientits reexamine this problem.  In the meantime, you have my perspective.
 The BEST current discussion of this problem is in Hal Povenmire's book
"Tektites, a Cosmic Paradox" which cab be orded through Michael Blood's
meteorite Web site and elsewhere.



LOUIS VARRICCHIO
 Environmental Information Specialist &
 Producer/Writer, "Our Changing Planet"
  (Visit OCP-TV on the Web at: www.umac.org/ocp)
  Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium
  Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences
  University of North Dakota
  Grand Forks, N.D. 58202-9007  U.S.A.
    Phone: 701-777-2482
    Fax: 701-777-2940
    E-mail: varricch@umac.org (in N.D.); morbius@together.net (in Vt.)

"Behind every man alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by
which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, a hundred
billion human beings have walked the planet Earth." -- Arthur C. Clarke

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